Kansas man convicted of molesting teen girls wrote how-to book

A Kansas City man judged guilty Wednesday of sex crimes against children kept meticulous records of his assaults and wrote handbooks on how to drug and molest girls.

James Phillip Edwards, 61, videotaped his assaults on 13 girls over a four-year period and documented his research on drugging them in a document entitled “How to Molest Young Girls,” which investigators found on his computer.

In it, he described mixing sleeping pills into root beer, ice cream or chocolate syrup to disguise the taste, authorities said.

Authorities also recovered a document called “Pedo Handbook,” in which Edwards included a section on “Drugging Children and Pre-teens.”

Edwards appeared in federal court Wednesday and pleaded no contest to 21 counts charging him with production of child pornography, drugging his victims, advertising child porn on the Internet and possession and attempted distribution of child porn.

In such pleas, a defendant admits that the government has the evidence to prove the crimes but does not admit committing them. U.S. District Judge Whipple accepted the pleas and found Edwards guilty, saying he wanted to avoid putting Edwards’ victims through a long public trial.